FOODS HUMAN NUTEITION, 367 



the value of money. The question of changes in supply include'S among other 

 matters the effect on cost of living of transportation facilities, advertising, 

 adulteration of foods, package goods, and short weights. 



In the appendix are summarized data on public markets in Boston, family 

 budgets, food prices in Canada and the United States, statistics of agriculture 

 in Massachusetts, statistics of meat supply, comparative expenditures at state 

 institutions, and other topics. 



Some quotations from the findings of the commission follow: 



" The advance of prices in the United States has been accelerated greatly by 

 the enormous waste of income, through uneconomic expenditure for war and 

 national armament and through multiple forms of extravagance, both public 

 and private, and of wastage, both individual and social. The increasing burden 

 of disease, accident, crime, and pauperism imposed upon society, and the loss 

 through expenditure on a rising scale for luxuries and through wasteful 

 methods of management in the household, have been potent contributing factors 

 to the advance of the cost of living. 



" The advance of prices has been further promoted by a complexity of causes, 

 operating on the side of supply to reduce the volume and increase the expenses 

 of production, and on the side of demand to extend and diversify the consump- 

 tion of commodities. The main factors in restricting supply and enhancing 

 the cost of commodities are the drain of population from the land, which has 

 decreased the proportion of persons engaged in producing the food supply ; 

 the exhaustion of natural resources, which has resulted in increased expenses 

 of production or diminished returns from the soil ; and uneconomic methods of 

 production and distribution, especially the latter. The chief influences on the 

 side of demand which have worked parallel to the forces affecting supply are 

 the growing concentration of population in great cities, which has increased 

 the proportion of nonproducing food consumers; the general advance of the 

 standard of living, which has enlarged the requirements on the part of indi- 

 vidual consumers of all classes; and the national habit of extravagance, which 

 has further extended and diversified the demand for comforts and luxuries 

 created by the advance of the standard of living." 



As a result of its investigation, the commission made a number of recom- 

 mendations with special reference to conditions in Massachusetts. 



Standard and cost of living [of cotton mill operatives in Switzerland and 

 Italy], S. L. Besso (In The Cotton Industry in Sicitzerland, Vorarlberg, and 

 Italy- Manchester and London, 1910, pp. 79-8^; 193-195). — Information is 

 summarized regarding the kinds and amounts of food eaten, the dietary habits, 

 the cost of food, and other similar topics, the data being discussed in compari- 

 son with conditions prevailing in England. The investigation of which this 

 forms a part was undertaken by the Victoria University of Manchester, England, 

 as a part of a series of studies of industry and commerce. 



The composition of East Indian food material, J. E. Q. Bosz (Ztschr. 

 Untersuch. Nahr. a. Gcmissmtl., 19 (1910), No. 12, pp. 747-756).— Continuing 

 the study of East Indian food materials, previously noted (E. S. R., 22, p. 665), 

 the author reports analyses of a large number of food materials, including 

 cereal grains and cereal products, beans and other legumes, nuts, tropical fruits 

 and other fruits, vegetables, spices, turtle eggs and eggs of poultry, edible birds' 

 nests, meat, fish, dairy products and many other food materials. 



The nutritive value of some soluble pentosans, m.annans, levulans and 

 galactans, Maey D. Swartz (Proc. Amcr. »S'oc. Biol. Chem., 1 {1910), No. 5, 

 pp. 257, 258). — Studies were made of the fate in the animal body of certain 

 water-soluble hemicelluloses, obtained from marine algae and similar substances. 



